


Children of Krypton #1

by Vigs



Series: One Multiverse Over [3]
Category: DCU, Superman - All Media Types
Genre: Clark isn't buff, F/M, Gen, Original DC reboot, also some Superman/Lex UST if you squint, the Clark/Lois is pretty much just flirting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-01 09:50:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 13,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15771690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vigs/pseuds/Vigs
Summary: Clark's struggle to balance his double life becomes complicated when he realizes that he may not have been the only survivor of Krypton's destruction.





	1. Clark

**Author's Note:**

> This story and its companion piece, Capes and Cowls, are the beginning of a frankly absurdly ambitious project: an original version of the DC multiverse. I'm drawing on multiple sources, including comics, the DCAU and other TV shows, and various movies, but this will mostly be an original interpretation of the characters. I would call it a "modern" reboot, but usually when people say that they mean "more violent and edgy and dark," and that's not what this is. An SJW reboot might be more accurate. I hope to keep the essences of the characters intact while exploring new directions their stories can take. I won't expand too much on those changes in the tags or author's notes, because they should come through naturally in the story, but I will promise this: no one gets fridged and there will be major characters who are queer and/or disabled and/or POC without that being their whole identity. Some stories or chapters will have higher ratings, archive warnings, or specific content notes.

Bank robberies in Metropolis had dropped off dramatically since Superman moved in five years ago. The most recent one had been perpetrated by an unarmed homeless man with diabetes who clearly just wanted a roof over his head and some semblance of healthcare, even if it was in prison. (Clark Kent’s profile on him in the  _ Daily Planet _ had led to an outpouring of sympathy and gifts for the robber, as well as a good job offer as soon as he made parole.)

This robbery, though, seemed serious. They had masks, hostages, and what looked like custom-made electricity guns in addition to more prosaic handguns. These guys were expecting him. On the bright side, they probably wouldn’t have bothered with electricity guns if they had access to Kryptonite, so there shouldn’t be any of that around.

He was peering through the roof of the bank, trying to figure out how to take out the robbers without putting any of the hostages at risk, when a sound stood out against the background noises of Metropolis: the unmistakable rhythm of helicopter blades, approaching fast. He swooped over to check it out, but realized that it was clearly marked as a news copter and turned his attention back to the bank.

That was when he felt the peculiar sensation of all his muscles involuntarily clenching as hard as they could, accompanied by bright light obscuring his vision. He knew he had been hit by a blast of electricity, but not where it came from or how it hit him in midair. By the time his vision cleared, he found himself barely a yard above the roof of the bank, and just managed to avoid going through it.

So, not a news helicopter, then. They’d managed to angle their shot so that Superman was between them and the bank’s lightning rod, making sure that the path of least resistance went straight through him.

Before they could line up another shot, he circled behind the helicopter until he was standing on the tail, then reached one arm up and let the blades break against it. He let the helicopter fall for a few seconds before he grabbed it, just to shake them up a little, then placed it on the ground behind the police line in the bank parking lot. It was immediately surrounded by officers.

“Thanks, Superman,” one of the police officers said. “We’ve got them trapped now. Only way out is through us.”

That was when every officer’s walkie-talkie simultaneously let out a crackle of static, followed by a frantic announcement.

“Clear a path! I repeat, clear a path! They’re in the armored car!”

Clark jumped into the air to assess the situation. Apparently there’d been an armored car parked outside the bank when the robbery started, and the robbers had used a mass of hostages as human shields to move from the building to the car. That might mean they had some kind of inside help--he was pretty sure armored cars were supposed to be harder to steal than that--but that would be for the police to figure out later.

He would have just ripped the roof off the car, but there was a hostage inside with a handgun pressed to her temple. Even he couldn’t get through armor plating fast enough to keep the trigger from being pulled. He’d have to stop them some other way.

“Superman, I know you can hear me,” one of the robbers said from inside the car. “You pick this thing up or start messing around with heat rays and she’s dead, got it?”

Was he supposed to respond somehow? He hoped not, since he couldn’t see any non-threatening way to do so.

The armored car continued to barrel down the street, apparently heading for the tunnel to New Jersey. They did realize that he didn’t have to let them go if they got out of Metropolis, didn’t they? They must.

At the entrance to the tunnel, the car put on an extra burst of speed, and someone inside yelled “Catch!” The hostage was being pushed out the car door.

There wasn’t any time to plan, only to fly down as fast as he could, match speed with the car, grab the screaming hostage, and swerve off to the side in a curve that he hoped was tight enough to keep them from slamming into the wall of the tunnel but loose enough that the acceleration wouldn’t hit her with too much force. She blacked out from the jerk, but he’d held her neck steady and a quick scan didn’t reveal any internal bleeding or organ damage, so he’d done about as well as circumstances permitted.

Since he wasn’t going to just leave her unconscious by the side of the road, he took her to one of the pursuing police cars and deposited her with them. He was about to go back into the tunnel after the thieves when he heard an explosion.

The overpass at the entrance to the tunnel had been blown up, blocking it off and leaving--Clark grimaced at the poor timing--a school bus dangling with two wheels over the edge. He could hear the children inside screaming.

He lifted the bus without too much trouble and deposited it back on the road, then hesitated, torn between trying to calm the hysterical children and going after the thieves.

“I’ve got the kids, Superman,” the bus driver yelled. “You go get the bastards who did this!”

When he got back into the tunnel through the side that hadn’t been blocked off, the robbers had almost finished transferring the money from the armored car to an unremarkable hatchback sedan. Superman dashed in and got their electricity guns away from them before they realized he was back, taking the time to bend each one into uselessness.

Two of the five men immediately put their hands up and dropped the guns and money, but the other three started shooting at him with handguns.

“Hey, watch out!” Superman said. “This is an enclosed space, you could get hurt by a--”

Before anyone else could react, a bullet bounced off his chest, then off the side of the armored car. It was headed towards the face of one of the gunmen when he darted over and caught it.

“--ricochet,” he finished. “Now put those down.”

Once the police had taken custody of the robbers, Superman headed towards STAR Labs with one of the bent electricity guns, grinning to himself once he was high enough to be out of sight. This had been a tricky one, but no one had died or even been seriously hurt. If Dr. Hamilton could figure out where the custom-made guns had come from, this could be a complete victory.

“You’re too late,” Dr. Hamilton said as soon as he got there. “They’re long gone.”

“What? Who?”

“Didn’t you hear me calling you? A bunch of masked men broke in here and stole an experimental para-radio transceiver!”

“Oh jeez, Dr. Hamilton, I’m sorry. There was a bank robbery, and then a schoolbus--”

“It’s alright, I understand. Even you can’t be everywhere at once. I suppose that explains where the police were, too.” He sighed. “I can’t figure out why anyone would want to steal that transceiver anyway. I made it to test some theories about how you draw strength from the sun, and it did seem to confirm the existence of another spectrum parallel to the EM spectrum, but I couldn’t even begin to theorize how to transmit anything by it. It’s a receiver with no transmitters.”

“Maybe they got the wrong thing?”

“Maybe.” Dr. Hamilton did not look reassured. “Anyway, what is that you have for me?”

“Oh, right. It’s an electricity gun. I thought it was probably custom-made, so maybe you could figure out who made it.”

“Hmph. I’d bet a month’s pay it was LexCorp, and six months’ pay that we’ll never tie it to him--not in court, anyway.”

“No bet,” Superman said, his good mood entirely gone. “Even if I gambled, no bet.”


	2. Clark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Keep an open mind when it comes to Clark's appearance and biology. He's still Superman, but he doesn't look quite like Superman normally does.

“Smallville, you never cease to reach new lows,” Lois said, sitting across from Clark at a table in the company breakroom.

“What did I do this time?” he asked.

“First of all, you’re eating what appears to be leftover meatloaf for lunch--”

“My mom made it!”

“Yeah, prove my point, why don’t you.”

“You’re just jealous because you know my actual food is better than your protein shakes,” he said with a grin. “I’ll share if you ask nicely.”

“I never do anything nicely,” she said, stealing herself a forkful of meatloaf. “Second, not only are you reading our own paper on your lunch break--”

“I don’t get to see the final layout otherwise.”

“--you were  _ laughing _ . What were you looking at, the final layout of the comics page? Is Marmaduke still a very large dog?”

“Actually, I was looking at your column,” he said, turning the paper so she could see it was the front page of the Metro section.

“Low blow,” she said, taking more meatloaf. “I know ‘Eye on the Sky’ is fluff, but it’s not comedy. Unless you think it’s really funny that Superman saved that bus full of kids?”

“Not that,” he said. “The picture. I didn’t realize ‘artist’s interpretation’ meant ‘add a hundred pounds of bulging muscle.’”

“Oh, that.” Lois waved a hand dismissively. “I mean, yeah, you and I have both met Superman and we both noticed that he’s not actually built like a truck, but most people just see him up in the sky, you know? Or when they do meet him, they notice the fact that he’s got a car over his head, not the fact that he’s got normal proportions.”

“Normal proportions,” Clark repeated skeptically. He glanced down at his own forearms, just double-checking that they hadn’t somehow changed overnight, but yep, he still had less muscle mass than Lois. She did martial arts or rock climbing or grizzly bear wrestling or something like that, but she wasn’t a bodybuilder or anything.

“Are you somehow the only one who doesn’t get this? People are more comfortable thinking that the guy who keeps catching airplanes and bridges and meteors and shit is built like a freight train and looks like a movie star. It’s weird and creepy if he’s kind of a skinny guy with eyes that’re too high up on his face.”

“I thought you liked him,” Clark said, suddenly acutely aware of the constant muscular contraction necessary to keep his face human-proportioned throughout the day. It wasn’t like his face got tired, exactly, but it was still sometimes frustrating that he only got to relax it when he was alone and when he was Superman. He pushed the rest of the meatloaf towards Lois.

“I do! Saved my life a bunch of times, surprisingly good company, and off the record, I’d love to get in those spandex tights of his someday. But he’s still strange-looking, and it’s still sort of creepy that he can look like he’s made of toothpicks and knock over buildings without breaking a sweat.”

“But it wouldn’t be strange if he was more muscular?” Clark asked, ignoring the off-the-record remark. Lois had made a few similarly unsubtle passes at him--or rather, at Superman--before, and he never knew quite what to do with them.

“It’d be less strange. Anyway, that’s how people picture him, so that’s how the artists draw him.” She tucked into the meatloaf, clearly finished with the conversation.

Clark considered asking how exactly people thought Superman could get enough of a workout to actually build muscle mass, considering that he could pick up cars and all, but decided against it. He tried not to talk about Superman with Lois much. Aside from the fact that she was pretty observant, hearing her talk about being attracted to him when he knew he couldn’t act on it was...well. It was one of those things you hoped for the patience to accept.

His phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out and frowned in concern.

“Hi, Ma. Everything okay?”

Lois snickered.

“Hello, Clark, it’s your mother,” Ma said. She was fully aware of the existence of caller ID, but still thought it was rude not to let the person you were calling know who you were. “Nothing’s wrong, but one of the machines in the old barn is acting up. It’d be great if you could come out and take a look at it sometime soon.”

Since the only thing in the old barn was the ship that had brought him to Earth, this was somewhat alarming, but she didn’t sound too concerned.

“Tell her this meatloaf’s great,” Lois commanded him.

“Is that your friend Lois?” Ma asked. “Tell her I said thank you, and I’ll send you home with extra next time.”

“Okay, Ma. I’ll come visit when there’s less going on at work,” he said, knowing she would understand that he meant he’d fly over as soon as he left the building.

“All right, dear. Have a good day. Love you.”

“Love you too,” Clark said, and hung up.

“I don’t know how you manage to get out there so often,” Lois said.

“There’s a train.”

“Oh, of course. It stops being sad how much of a homebody you are if there’s a  _ train _ .” Lois polished off his meatloaf and pushed the empty container towards him. “I’ve gotta get back to work. Thanks for lunch.”

“Any time.”

Clark washed out the container in the break room sink, only partly because he knew Lois would crack up if she saw him, and contemplated what could have happened back home. The last time the ship had done anything, he’d been twelve. It had responded to a cautious touch from his hand by connecting to his brain and teaching him Kryptonian, which had definitely been unsettling. What could it be doing without him even there?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From here, I'll be posting a chapter of Children of Krypton every other week. Next week, I'll post the third chapter of Capes and Cowls, a Batman fic set in the same universe.


	3. Clark

That evening, Clark zipped into his parents’ barn faster than the human eye could follow. They always kept the window in the hayloft unlocked and a change of clothes for him up there, so that he didn’t end up wandering around the farm in his Superman costume. He put on the overalls and flannel shirt Ma had left there for him and headed to the house. He could smell chicken cooking in the kitchen, and there was a pie on the windowsill. For a couple of aging hippies, his folks sure had rustic Americana down pat.

“Supper’s just about ready,” his Ma said when he walked in the door. She gave him a warm smile, but didn’t stop stirring the gravy she was making. “I thought about making meatloaf for you to bring back to your friend, but I suppose you can’t tell her you came out tonight.”

“Not really, no,” Clark said. He walked over and gave her a peck on the cheek, careful not to jostle her. “Pa still in the field?”

“He went to check on the apple trees, but he should be done soon. We can take a look out in the old barn after supper. Set the table, would you?”

“Sure. What’s the ship doing, anyway?”

“Darned if I know. It’s all lit up and repeating something in that impossible language of yours.”

Ma had made a wholehearted attempt to learn Kryptonian when Clark did, but he hadn’t been a very good teacher at twelve, and the ship wasn’t willing to beam it into her head. The grammar was completely different from English in a way that Clark would have trouble explaining even now. He’d programmed the ship with a pretty extensive Kryptonian-English dictionary, but it still wouldn’t let Ma interface with it or accept commands from her no matter what he did, so that had ended up being sort of a waste of time. Hopefully someday he'd be able to transfer that information to something human-accessible.

“Let me just make sure it’s not an emergency,” Clark said, and zipped out to the old barn in an eyeblink.

The ship was lit up, all right. There was a pattern of three circles forming a triangle, shining away like anything. It hadn't done that before.

“Primary-artificial-mind within range,” the ship was repeating. That first word couldn’t be translated into English as fewer than three words, but it was all one in Kryptonian, like a name. “Update database? Primary-artificial-mind within range--”

Clark went back to the kitchen.

“Not an emergency,” he said. “At least, I don’t think so.”

“It didn’t sound like it was counting down to explode, or anything,” his Ma said.

“What’s going to explode?” Pa asked, wiping his feet as he walked in. “Hey, Clark. Good to see you.”

“Nothing’s going to explode,” Clark said. He set the table, careful not to damage the glasses with superspeed.

“Good. Is that chicken and dumplings?”

“Yup,” Ma said. “That old rooster just got too mean to keep around. Hope he tastes better than he acted.”

“Dang, Ma, I was just here,” Clark said. “I’m not the prodigal son.”

“Oh, a rooster’s hardly a fatted calf,” Ma retorted. “And we’ve got another one half-grown anyway. Dig in.”

The food was delicious, and hearing about how the farm was going was a comfort. Clark told them about the stories he’d been working on, and about the bank robbery.

“I thought the crime rate in Metropolis had gotten pretty low,” Pa said when he’d finished the story. “Seems odd that your scientist friend and a bank would get robbed at the same time.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought too,” Clark said. “Usually when people are trying to distract me they kidnap Lois, but maybe someone decided to rob a bank instead this time. Or maybe stealing from Dr. Hamilton was supposed to keep me away from the bank. He said the thing they stole wasn’t very useful or valuable.”

“And how is Lois?” Ma asked.

“Same as always, Ma,” Clark said, determinedly casual.

“Don’t bother the boy, Martha,” Pa said. “He’s allowed to work out his business in his own time.”

The chicken and dumplings and the pie, which turned out to be strawberry rhubarb, were both fantastic, of course. Clark was pretty sure his Ma could be a gourmet chef if she wanted to, but she always said it was the fresh ingredients that made the difference.

“I’m going to go figure out what’s happening with the ship,” Clark said once he’d finished eating and loaded the dishwasher. “Anyone want to come with?”

“I’ll come along,” Ma said. “Always curious about that contraption.”

The two of them walked back to the old barn. Pa kept it looking half-fallen down, even though really it was perfectly structurally sound. It was also about as far from the road as the Kent property went. Not exactly impenetrable security, but it had worked so far.

“Primary-artificial-mind within range. Update database?” the ship said again.

Clark put his hand against the interface panel.

“Query: define ‘Primary-artificial-mind’,” he said in Kryptonian.

“Primary-artificial-mind: the repository of all Kryptonian knowledge,” the ship said. “An artificial intelligence charged with caring for Krypton and its people. Previously believed to have been destroyed with Krypton.”

“Does this ‘Primary-artificial-mind’ sense you?”

“Primary-artificial-mind’s current capabilities are unknown. However, this ship is in stealth mode. If Primary-artificial-mind has not substantially updated its search and detection capabilities since last contact, it will not sense the presence of this ship unless contacted.”

“And you would have to contact it to update your database?”

“Confirmed.”

Clark thought for a moment. Something wasn’t adding up.

“If Primary-artificial-mind was charged with caring for Krypton and its people, how could it have survived Krypton’s destruction?” he asked.

“Unknown. Previously available information indicated that Primary-artificial-mind did not know Krypton was going to be destroyed, and would not have been prepared for its destruction. Primary-artificial-mind should not have been able to lie to the Council, and it consistently insisted that Jor-El’s data was incorrect and the planet was in no danger.”

Clark always got a mess of conflicted feelings when he heard the name of his birth… father? Parent? The ship wasn’t good at translating things into the kinds of human terms Clark had grown up with. It told him that he’d been named Kal-El and that Jor-El had put him in the ship and sent him into space, which had saved his life, but what if Jor-El had been wrong? What kind of person could put his baby son in a rocketship? Why hadn’t he come along?

Clark set those thoughts aside. He hadn’t been able to sort them all out for more than a decade; he probably wouldn’t get anywhere new tonight, and he needed to focus on this Primary-artificial-mind.

If they’d been talking about a person and not an artificial intelligence, Clark would have been extremely suspicious of someone who loudly claimed that everything was safe and then turned out to have escaped the disaster that killed everyone else. But maybe it had been buggy, or something? Or maybe Krypton’s destruction had made it uninhabitable, but not completely inimical to artificial life.

Or maybe something else entirely was going on.

“Calculate the probability that what you sense isn’t actually Primary-artificial-mind.”

The ship made a tone to indicate that it was working on the problem, but was silent for a long moment.

“Unable to calculate. Too many unknown factors. Update database to increase predictive ability.”

“Negative,” Clark said. “Do not update database.”

“Acknowledged,” the ship said. Clark stepped back, and the message didn’t repeat. The three circular lights stayed lit, though. The triangular shape could almost have been a face, with a round O of a mouth.

“So what was that all about?” Ma asked.

“I think something’s coming,” Clark said, hope and fear churning in his stomach. “And I think either it’s Kryptonian, or it wants me to think it is.”


	4. Clark

In his apartment in Metropolis, Clark tossed and turned, unable to sleep. He didn’t need as much sleep as most people, but he did need some, and it didn’t seem like he was going to get it.

There could be Kryptonians on the way. His ship thought it was the only vessel that had escaped the destruction of Krypton, but what if it wasn’t? Clark had always thought it was strange that a civilization with spaceflight capabilities wouldn’t have a single colony or even a single ship off-world when it was destroyed.

When he’d first learned about his heritage, Clark spent a lot of time daydreaming about other Kryptonians coming from the stars to meet him, to make him feel less alone. He’d mostly come to terms with the fact that it would never happen. Once he realized the extent of his powers, he told himself it was a good thing there weren’t any other Kryptonians on Earth. It would just take one superpowered jerk to cause a whole lot of trouble for a whole lot of people.

Anyway, contact between two civilizations with very different levels of technology had historically gone really badly, at least on Earth. 

But it would be even worse if what was approaching wasn’t Kryptonian at all, but just pretending to be. Clark finally fell into a fitful sleep, and couldn’t recall his dreams when he woke up.

There wasn’t much Clark could do about something possibly approaching from space. He spent a little more time than usual just flying around the city as Superman in the next week, but everything seemed quiet enough. Well, “quiet” wasn’t quite the word for what happened when he really let himself listen to all of Metropolis at once, but there was nothing he could pick out as a source of impending trouble.

He was going to head home for the evening on Thursday when he noticed Lois sitting on the roof of the Daily Planet. She was leaning back against the base of the globe statue and typing on her laptop with a pile of papers to her left and a mug of coffee to her right, like the roof was her personal office. It looked like she’d taken off her pumps and was using one to weight down her pile of notes and the other to hold down a single piece of paper with the words--he flew up a little higher to get the angle to see them--”Superman: come by if you feel like talking.”

Did he feel like talking? To Lois, sure. And all right, he knew it wouldn’t really impress her, but he still did his speed trick, flying over and then stopping fast enough that he would seem to suddenly appear a few feet in front of her, hovering in the air, without even ruffling her papers.

“Gimme a sec,” she said without looking up. “Just need to finish this.”

The “sec” lasted long enough for Clark to feel a bit silly looming over her, so he sat cross-legged on the roof, surreptitiously admiring the way her improbably purple eyes darted across her work. After a few moments, she closed the laptop with a decisive snap and smiled at him.

“Was there something you wanted to discuss, Ms. Lane?” he asked in his Superman voice, deeper than his normal one and stripped of Midwestern accent.

“Oh, if you wanted to give me a quote about the bank robbery that’d be great, but off the record, I wanted to ask if you’d like to have dinner.”

“Um.” He looked down at his brightly-colored costume. “I appreciate the offer, but I think I might stand out at a restaurant.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of pizza at my apartment.”

“Wouldn’t that be a little unprofessional?” It was a little scary how badly he wanted to eat pizza in Lois Lane’s apartment.

“Unprofessional?” She raised an eyebrow. “If anything happens that might compromise my objectivity more than having my life saved multiple times, I’ll let my editor know in the morning.”

“Um.” He couldn’t seem to string together any actual words. “I, you’re, that’s…”

“Just pizza,” she said, apparently taking pity on him. “Or Thai, if you don’t like pizza. I promise I won’t get human cooties on you.”

“It’s not that! It’s just...” He swallowed. “Humans are very… fragile.”

“I’m pretty sure adding Superman to my plans for the evening actually makes them safer,” she said.

I’m not, he didn’t say. Lana Lang wouldn’t have ended up in the hospital the night after Homecoming if she hadn’t been dating Clark. He should really say no to Lois.

“Won’t it be a problem if people see Superman going to your apartment with you?” he found himself asking instead.

“I’ll leave a window open,” she said. “You can fly in without anyone noticing. What kind of pizza do you like?”

He almost said Hawaiian, but she’d mocked Clark Kent for liking pineapple on pizza enough times already. If he tried to be friends with her as Superman without her figuring out that he was also friends with her as Clark...jeez, this was giving him a headache.

“It’s not a good idea,” he said, standing up. “I appreciate the invitation, but people have already targeted you to try to get to me. No matter how cautious we are, spending more time together would only encourage that.”

“So, what, you don’t get to have any friends?” she asked. “That doesn’t seem fair.”

“I’d rather have no friends than have friends who are in danger because of me. Have a good evening, Ms. Lane.”

With a great deal of reluctance, he flew away.

Lois was in a strange mood at work the next day, pensive and almost quiet. Clark felt horribly guilty, and of course he couldn’t show it, because he wasn’t the one who’d turned her down, Superman was.

“Hey, Smallville,” she asked him over lunch, “have you run across any reports of Superman accidentally hurting anyone? I’ve been looking into it all morning, and all I’ve got is a couple people he caught while he was moving too fast, back when he first moved in here. Bruises, whiplash, nothing major.”

“I don’t think I’ve heard about anything other than that,” Clark said, shocked. “Why, did you hear something?”

The hostage from the bank robbery was okay, right? He hadn’t noticed anything seriously wrong…

“No, it just seems like something you’d expect to have happened, you know? Before he got the hang of things.” She took a bite of her salad, staring into the middle distance. “I mean, compared to him, humans are so… fragile.”

Oh. Damn. She’d been paying more attention to what he said the evening before than he was, apparently.

“Maybe he practised on crash test dummies or something,” Clark suggested. He couldn’t exactly tell Lois that he knew Superman’s powers had developed gradually enough that he could adjust to them. His strength had developed slowly, and he’d had plenty of time to practice writing without pushing his pencil through his desk and hugging his Ma without hurting her.

“Maybe,” Lois said skeptically.

“Where’s this coming from, anyway?” Clark asked, as if he didn’t know.

“Eh, I’m just having a bad day,” she said. “And it got me wondering what would happen if he ever had a bad day. What’s the super equivalent of spilling your coffee and getting a run in your hose? Accidentally crushing a cat you’re trying to rescue from a tree?”

“I think we would have heard about it if that ever happened,” Clark said, wincing at the mental image. “Luthor’d probably pay for a full-page ad to run a picture of it.”

“Yeah. Maybe never having a bad day is one of his superpowers,” Lois said.

Clark tried not to snort at that.

“I could ask the hospitals if they’ve got any records of inexplicable injuries,” Lois mused. “It’s not a HIPAA violation if they don’t tell me who it is, right?”

“You could probably convince someone of that,” Clark said.

From across the city, there was the sound of an explosion. No, four explosions in quick succession. Could be controlled demolition, but… no, there were sounds of panic, too.

“I’ll talk to you later,” Clark said hastily, and headed in the direction of the men’s room. Once he was pretty sure there weren’t any eyes on him, he zipped away at super speed, stashed his civilian clothes behind the dumpster in the alley next to the Planet, and flew to where he’d heard the explosions.

Someone had blown up an overpass. They hadn’t done a complete job; a few of the structural supports were holding, but he could hear steel groaning and concrete grinding. It wouldn’t be long, and the street below the overpass was completely backed up, cars full of people with nowhere to go. There were a few cars trapped on the overpass itself, as well.

Move the cars, or try to pick up the whole chunk of overpass and put it somewhere safe? He had to make a split-second decision, and that was always hard but it was harder with Lois’ comments about accidental injuries and fragile humans still in his ears.

The overpass might crumble if he tried to pick it up. Better to move the cars. First the ones under the overpass, then the ones on top, right? If he couldn’t get them all in time, it’d be easier to survive that fall than being crushed.

It was easier to pick cars up if he didn’t worry about damaging them, or about keeping them upright. They were hard to get a good grip on without at least denting them unless he grabbed the bumper or something, but that could injure the passengers. Breaking a window or two would have made it easy, but that would rain glass on the people inside, which also wasn’t exactly ideal.

Well, the people in the cars would almost certainly prefer a few dents in their car to being crushed. He went ahead and grabbed the first car, wincing a little at the feeling of his fingers easily sinking into fiberglass, and moved it to an empty stretch of road nearby. Soon he was zipping back and forth, getting everyone out of danger.

There were just a few cars left on the overpass when he heard a change in the noise it was making, creaking turning to snapping. No more time to be careful. He grabbed the cars two at a time and shoved them onto the shoulder of the unbroken part of the overpass, fast enough that the airbags went off.

Emergency services pulled up as he got the last of the cars to safety, just in time to see the overpass crash to the ground. Clark did his best to keep any flying debris from hitting anyone, but a few smaller pieces got through. He really really hoped none of them would happen to hit a neck or an eye.

He spent some time getting people out of damaged cars and into ambulances. None of the injuries seemed serious, thank goodness. Only after everyone was safe did he fly over to confer with the police about the bombing.

“There haven’t been any threats or demands,” said the officer in charge. “And no one’s claimed responsibility. It was kind of a sloppy job; if the bombs had been placed a little better, it would’ve come down right away, faster than even you could’ve stopped it, Superman.”

“That could have been intentional,” Clark realized. The bank robbers had blown up an overpass to distract him, although it hadn’t taken as long to fall, or endangered as many people. “They might have been trying to distract me from something else. I should go.”

He flew to STAR Labs, but everything was fine there. Back at the Planet, Jimmy was going through photos and Lois was at her desk. She happened to look out the window as he flew by, and gave him a little wave and a strange smile. He waved back.

Luthor was also at his desk. He did not look up when Clark flew by.

Maybe the bombers had just made a mistake? They could be new at this. Maybe the lack of deaths would convince them to give up on planting bombs around the city.

It didn’t seem like anything else urgently needed his attention, and he did need to put in some more time at work, so Clark pulled his civilian clothes back on over his uniform and went back to his desk. He was concentrating so hard on listening for further trouble that his article on the bombing was thoroughly mediocre, and Perry barked at him a bit over it, but editorial could patch it up.

That night he inspected every overpass in the city, but didn’t find a single bomb. That should have made him happier than it did. Who in the world was behind this, and what were they trying to do?

He still had that weird feeling that it might have been meant as a distraction for him, but a distraction from what?


	5. Lois

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because it'll be relevant to this chapter: in this setting, Metropolis replaces Philadelphia.
> 
> CN: home invasion, kidnapping, and a sexist slur

It wasn’t like Lois minded being the go-to reporter for Superman stories, or having a regular column on the front page of the Metro section. It was just that sometimes she wanted to write about _other_ things, and that Superman stuff took up so much of her time during work hours that she did a lot of that writing at home, sometimes in the middle of the night.

She was fully aware of the irony in the fact that this meant she did her fluff writing in very professional skirt- or pantsuits and her serious writing in oversized t-shirts and pajama pants.

So there she was, writing about Metropolis’ dire lack of low-income housing in a ratty Metropolis Meteors t-shirt that she’d stolen from an ex-boyfriend and a pair of red flannel pajama pants at 3 am, when someone very slowly and quietly opened the door to her apartment—which had _not_ been unlocked, so they must have very slowly and quietly picked the lock without her even noticing.

Two men in balaclavas stared at her, apparently as surprised to see her awake as she was to see strangers in her apartment in the middle of the night. It probably said something pretty bad about her life that her first thought was _damn, this is going to be my least stylish kidnapping ever_.

Her second thought was to yell for Superman at the top of her lungs, but her thinking was pretty slow at three in the morning and these guys must have been professionals, because she only got as far as “SUP—” before they’d grabbed her and shoved a wadded-up ball of cloth in her mouth.

“I thought she’d be asleep!” one of the men hissed to the other. “Why isn’t she asleep? You think _he_ heard her?”

“Dunno. Ow! Damn, this bitch can kick. Get her legs.”

Lois chose to take the comment about her kicking ability as a compliment.

They duct-taped her wrists, legs, and mouth, which was a pain in the ass but workable. She could probably get her hands free if they left her to her own devices for a moment.

Then they carried her over to the window, which was extremely concerning because she lived on the 21st floor. If they chucked her out the window, Superman probably wouldn’t catch her, and she’d be a poorly-dressed smear on the concrete. She redoubled her efforts to wriggle out of her captors’ hands.

One of them pulled out a knife, and she stilled. They wouldn’t need a knife to make her into street pizza, so they must have a plan to get away with her out the window, not just to throw her.

“Yeah, you don’t want me to cut up that pretty face, do you?” the man with the knife said. Lois was pretty sure he was the one who’d called her a bitch earlier. “Just relax, we’re not going to hurt you unless you make us.”

It was hard to see what was going on at the angle they were holding her, but she was pretty sure that they unlocked and opened her window, then handed her over to someone just outside. Some sort of hovering platform—not a helicopter, that would have made noise. High-tech.

That meant Luthor was probably the one behind this. She was sort of relieved. He was smart enough to have given strict orders not to kill her, since that would make her useless as a hostage or a bargaining chip or whatever he wanted her for.

The hovering platform—no, there was a ceiling above her now, it was more of a hovering ship—was able to hold her, the two men who’d been in her apartment, and one other who’d been waiting outside. Once they were all aboard and the door was closed, it moved away from her building at what felt like a pretty considerable speed. There were no windows, but she was pretty sure they were moving southeast. At the speed they were going and for the time they traveled, they might have gotten as far as Delaware.

She honestly had no idea if Superman would be able to hear her from Delaware. That was concerning. It would make escaping on her own harder, too. Who bothered to cultivate contacts in _Delaware_?

Of course, it could be that she was way off and they were still in the city limits. It was 3 am, after all. Not really the best time to try to calculate your position while bound and gagged in a vessel you couldn’t even categorize.

They landed and moved her from the ship, or whatever it was, to some kind of warehouse. Of course these assholes _would_ move her way too quickly for her to spot any landmarks. Ugh, she was definitely going to miss the deadline on that low-income housing piece, and they’d probably give it to Kent, and he’d get his midwestern optimism all over it. Kent wouldn’t know “hard-hitting” if it punched him in the face.

They took her to some kind of cell and actually untaped her wrists and her legs, which hurt. Then the third person in a balaclava, the one who’d waited outside while the other two grabbed her, put a hand on the tape on her cheek.

“I’m going to take this off,” they said, and oh, that was _so obviously_ Lex’s #1 goon Mercy Graves, but Lois knew she’d never be able to prove it. “But if you so much as _whisper_ for Superman, we’re going to knock you unconscious, and when you wake up, we’ll do it again. You wrote a story about repetitive head injuries in sports last month, didn’t you? I know you don’t want it to happen to you. Nod if you understand.”

Lois nodded, rolling her eyes at the melodrama of it all.

“Trying out a new look, Mercy?” she asked once she could speak again. “All-black and a balaclava is a good look for you. Well, not really, but it’s better than that chauffeur-stripper thing you usually wear.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mercy said, sounding bored. “I promise you, there’s no Mercy here.”

“Oh, I cannot believe you said that to me. That is such a corny line,” Lois said. Talking was good. Superman might hear her or Mercy even if she wasn’t saying his name. “Did you have another one planned for if I called you Graves?”

“If she starts calling for you-know-who, shut her up,” Mercy told the other two men. “If she tries to escape, hurt her. No permanent damage, though, and don’t touch her if she’s good. I have things to take care of.”

She left Lois alone with the two goons.

“Can I have some water?” Lois asked them. One of them shrugged, went over to a minifridge she hadn’t noticed, and tossed her a bottle of water.

She chugged it. Having cloth in your mouth for what must have been half an hour made you _really_ thirsty.

While she drank, the two men set up a folding table and chairs. One of them pulled out a deck of cards. She could work with this.

“Deal me in,” she said, pulling up a third chair. The two exchanged glances.

“We’re guarding you, not hanging out with you,” one of them said. She was pretty sure he was the one who’d called her a bitch.

“So? Can’t you multitask?” Lois asked.

“You don’t have anything to bet,” the other one pointed out.

“Listen, odds are at least 50/50 this ends with the guy whose name I can’t say coming to rescue me, okay?” she said, and grinned. “So give me some kind of tokens to bet with, and the more you win from me—if you win any—the easier I’ll ask him to go on you.”

The two traded looks. One of them shrugged and found a piece of paper, ripped it into pieces, and handed them to her.

“More fun with three anyway,” he said to the other one, who snorted but started dealing without argument.

“So do you two have names?” Lois asked. “Or do I just have to decide who to call Bonnie and who to call Clyde?”  


Three hours later, they were still playing. The man who had called her a bitch had told her his name was John. The other one said his was Mike. Lois politely didn’t call them on their lies. Mike had left the room briefly to get the three of them some terrible coffee, but Lois drank hers without complaining.

John had won a lot of money off Mike. Lois’ paper tokens had moved around the table some, but they were all in front of her now, plus a couple bucks.

“Is there a bathroom I can use?” she asked. Mike nodded at the door he hadn’t gone through to get coffee.

“It’s not locked,” he said.

“Thanks,” she said, and left the two to their game.

She really did need to use the bathroom, but once she’d finished, she took a minute to take a gamble.

“Superman,” she said in a slightly lowered voice, “if you can hear me, I’m okay, but I could use a hand out of here. I can’t yell for you, but I hope you can hear me anyway. Maybe you work like Beetlejuice. Superman, Superman, Superman.”

Then she washed her hands and rejoined the guys.

“My deal?” she asked.

Superman crashed through the wall.

“Told you,” Lois said to Mike and John. “No, don’t go for the guns, are you new? He’s Superman. It’ll bounce off.”

“It won’t bounce off you,” John said, but he seemed hesitant to actually point the gun at her.

“Murder charges won’t bounce off you either,” she retorted. “Hi, Superman. These guys aren’t too bad, but Mercy Graves is around here somewhere.”

“I looked all over the city and couldn’t find you,” Superman said, sounding amused as he disarmed Mike and John, crushing their guns into uselessness. “Why didn’t I guess you were playing poker in Wilmington? And I do not work like Beetlejuice.”

“We _are_ in Delaware? Hah! I knew it,” Lois said. She dealt cards out to Mike and John. “Another round or two while Supes cleans up the place?”

“Might as well,” Mike said, sounding resigned.

They got in three more hands before the police came. Mike and John went quietly. Lois promised she’d testify on their behalf at their trials, although she only really meant it in Mike’s case. John had called her a bitch and threatened to cut her face up; Mike had gotten her coffee.

She didn’t try to convince them to turn evidence against Luthor. Even John wasn’t bad enough that she wanted to see him dead.

“Can I offer you a lift back to Metropolis?” Superman asked her.

“That’d be great, thanks,” she said, smiling at him. It had taken her a while to get used to him—all that power contained in such a small, almost sickly-looking form, the slightly alien proportions of his face, just the _fact_ of him —but at this point she was sort of maybe a little completely in love with him.

He was just so _good_. It made her want to sit on his face and call him a good boy.

“So was Luthor trying to make you do something or else he’d kill me, or what?” Lois asked over the rush of the wind. Flying with him was great, the way she could see the world stretched out below her and feel the wind bite at her. His arms around her were thin and cool and had absolutely no give to them, like steel bands, and yet somehow he’d never given her so much as a bruise.

“No, I just, well, noticed you weren’t at work,” he admitted sheepishly. She loved making Superman sheepish. “So I checked your apartment, and it looked like it’d been broken into. I looked all over the city for you.”

“Do you always check up on me at work?” she asked, amused.

“I fly by the Planet a lot, and your desk is right by the window…”

“Well, I appreciate the rescue even if it was made possible by your stalker tendencies.” She pressed her grin into his shoulder, hoping he could feel it.

“Yeah, that looked like a really dire game of poker I rescued you from,” he said. “I assume you want to go back to your apartment?”

“Yes please,” Lois said. She’d sort of forgotten what she was wearing. Well, maybe flannel was sexy to Kryptonians, who knew.

He touched down gently in her apartment a ridiculously short time later.

“Ugh, I feel like I could sleep for a week, but I’m going to finish that low-income housing article if it kills me,” she said, stretching.

“I’m sorry,” Superman said. He sounded so guilty. “People keep doing this sort of thing to you because of me.”

“They do,” she agreed. “They also do this sort of thing because I snooped where I shouldn’t have, or wrote an article that pissed them off, or wouldn’t go out with them. And you save me every time.”

“Still,” he insisted. “Most of the time it’s because of me.”

“Yeah, probably,” she said, unconcerned. “Which is why we might as well spend more time together. People already kidnap me because of you; they’d have a much harder time if you were right next to me when they tried.”

“Then they’d try harder,” he said grimly.

“And it still wouldn’t be your fault.”

“Lois.” He looked conflicted. “It’s not that I don’t want to. I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I’m a big girl—”

“Who has an article to finish,” he said firmly. “And I have a city to protect. A pleasure as always, Ms. Lane.”

“Hang on, what happened to ‘Lois’?” she asked, but he was already gone.


	6. Clark

Clark yawned, rolled over, and turned off his alarm clock. It didn’t seem to have any effect, and he frowned, still half-asleep. He’d had to get a particularly piercing alarm clock so that it wouldn’t get lost in the background sounds of the city; could someone in his building have done the same? That would be annoying.

As he came a bit more awake, he realized that his alarm wasn’t due to go off for another hour and a half, and the beeping wasn’t coming from inside his building at all. It had to be _loud_ , then, for it to have woken him up. People should be reacting to that, but he couldn’t hear any commotion; just incredibly shrill beeping like a nightmare of an alarm clock.

Wait—that was _too_ shrill. Higher than a dog whistle, even. Humans wouldn’t be able to hear it at all. Probably not dogs, either. Bats, maybe? But a bat couldn’t possibly make a noise that _loud_. Normally he was great at filtering out background noise—he had to be—but this wasn’t a noise he was used to, and he couldn’t ignore it. It felt like it was drilling into his skull.

He put his pillow over his head. It made absolutely no difference.

It wasn’t that he ever expected to have a day completely _off_ , but it would have been nice if today could have gone a little easy on him, at least. He had some catching up to do at work. Yesterday he’d spent the morning frantically scouring the city for Lois and the afternoon doing her work (other than the low-income housing piece, which she was apparently convinced he couldn’t handle) in addition to his, since even Perry didn’t demand that his employees come in after a middle-of-the-night kidnapping.

Covering for Lois meant ghostwriting a column about himself. It was awkward.

So it would have been nice if today could have been _relatively_ quiet, but apparently that was too much to ask for. Clark sighed, removed the pillow from his head, and changed from his pajamas to his uniform. He brushed his teeth and took an extra moment to make sure he didn’t accidentally go out with Clark Kent’s hair, or with bedhead, in his half-awake state.

(He’d done the S curl more or less as a joke when they’d first started calling him Superman, but now it was a whole _thing_ and he had an _image_ , which was the last thing he’d wanted or expected when he moved to Metropolis, but he tried to make the best of it.)

He turned off his alarm clock, since it didn’t seem likely he’d be going back to sleep in the next hour, and flew out the window.

Approaching the beeping wasn’t exactly painful—not many things were, except Kryptonite—but it definitely wasn’t comfortable. His annoyance turned to concern, though, when he saw that the sound was coming from a device attached to a support beam on an overpass.

Two overpasses destroyed in the past week, and now there was a suspicious device attached to a third. He couldn’t be sure it was a bomb, but it definitely didn’t look like it was supposed to be there. Better to get it out of the city first, and worry about exactly what it was after.

He went to pry the machine away from the support beam and met a surprising amount of resistance. Whoever had attached this here hadn’t been fooling around; the three heavy-duty bolts holding it in place went at least halfway through the support beam. If he wasn’t careful taking it out, he could easily bring the whole overpass down himself. There were wires running down the length of the bolts, too, so cutting through them with his heat vision might trigger the bomb, if it was a bomb.

It was like one of those puzzle-boxes Jimmy liked to toy with between shoots. You’d think having X-ray vision would make those things a piece of cake, but no such luck. Clark had actually broken one just to get Jimmy to stop making him try to work them. He’d bought the kid a replacement, of course.

If he carefully cut through the bolts but not the wires, could he slide the wires out without breaking them? Maybe he ought to call a bomb squad and have the area evacuated. Not that there were many people out at this ungodly hour.

He tried carefully unscrewing one of the bolts. It was a frustratingly fiddly task, but he managed to get it out of the concrete, only to find that the wire attached to it had been attached to the bottom of the bolt-hole with some sort of adhesive, so he’d basically accomplished nothing.

And that _noise_ was _still going_.

There were definitely electronics in the body of the device, but nothing that looked obviously bomb-like to him. He wasn’t an expert, but he’d seen more than enough bombs over the last five years. Nothing here looked like a blasting cap or a store of chemicals or anything like that.

If he called in a bomb squad and it wasn’t a bomb, he would have wasted everyone’s time. If he called in a bomb squad and it _was_ a bomb, it might go off while he was waiting for them. He could get them to block off the area, but there was no one on the overpass right now, and that wouldn’t be true for much longer; it was starting to get towards morning.

Fine. He took off his cape and wrapped it around the device as much as he could, then quickly sliced through the wires and the remaining bolts with his laser vision and immediately flew directly up as fast as he could. He was well above the city before he stopped and cautiously unwrapped the device.

No explosion. No more beeping. Was that it? Why would anyone go to all that trouble for a noisemaker that only he could hear?

He’d take it to an empty lot and call in a bomb squad, just in case. If they didn’t find anything, he’d have Dr. Hamilton take a look at it.

Right as he came to that decision, the shrill beeping began again, and he groaned. It sounded even higher-pitched this time. It wasn’t coming from the device he was carrying, though. Keeping that device securely wrapped in his cape, he flew towards the source of the new sound.

Another device securely bolted to the supports of another overpass. Of course. It looked the same as the first one, inside and out, so he used his heat vision to remove it as well, wrapped it up in his cape, and flew both of them to an empty lot.

A third beeping, high enough that he was pretty sure it was on the edge of even his hearing, started while he explained the situation to the police. It felt like it took a million years for the bomb squad to do their job, with that sound shrilling through his bones the whole time.

It wasn’t _actually_ a million years, of course, but it was long enough that he popped back to his apartment to call in sick. Hopefully he’d be able to get to work in the afternoon. Even if he did, he’d probably be writing at home late into the night.

Finally, the bomb squad reported that there was nothing explosive about the devices. Clark gritted his teeth. He knew he should be happier that no one was in danger, but really, it seemed like this whole situation had been designed just to annoy him, and it was _working_.

“So if there are more, and they look the same on the inside, they should be safe too, right?” he asked the head of the bomb squad, who seemed as baffled by the whole thing as he was.

“Yeah, I don’t know what these are, but they aren’t even made to look like explosives. Not on the inside,” the man confirmed. Clark hated that he’d forgotten the guy’s name. “I guess you can just do your X-ray thing and make sure they’re a match on your own, huh? Always wondered how that worked. Like, do you _emit_ X-rays, or—”

“It’s not really X-rays,” Clark said, rubbing the back of his neck. “I used that as a metaphor the first time I was explaining it, and people started taking it literally. I’m pretty sure there are more of these around, but I’ll take them straight to STAR Labs as long as they’re an internal match with these ones and call you if they aren’t. Does that work for you?”

“Sounds good, Superman,” the man said. “See you around. Or, well, hopefully I won’t.”

“Right,” Clark said. Normally he would have waved, but his arms were full of mysterious devices, so he nodded at the man and flew away.

Clark did his best to be patient while he waited for Dr. Hamilton to finish up what he’d been doing and take a look at the devices, and to keep his voice even and at a normal speed while he explained where he’d found them and what they’d been doing.

Then he was _finally_ free to go after the third one. It looked the same as the other two on the inside, so he sliced it free of the support beam and flew it to STAR Labs with the others.

That seemed to be the end of it. He flew back to his apartment, took off his uniform, showered, put his uniform back _on_ , and put his day clothes on top of it. He was lucky that not much adhered to the Kryptonian fabric, including odors. It would have been a little tricky to take it to the laundromat.

He’d just gotten into a groove with his writing, two hours after he’d deactivated the last device, when another beeping noise started. This one felt like it was rattling in his teeth. Too low for humans to hear this time.

It occurred to him that if there had been a device that made sounds even higher than the last one, and he hadn’t heard and responded to it, then whoever had set them (Lex, it _had_ to be Lex, when was this kind of nonsense ever _not_ Lex) now knew how high his hearing went. Clark couldn’t think of a way that information could easily be used against him, but Lex probably could. So that was just great.

If that was what was happening--an elaborate and annoying hearing test--then tactically, the best thing to do would be to ignore the sound and go about his day.

Hadn’t he read something about infrasound negatively affecting humans? And judging by the gap this time, it would likely go on for two whole hours.

Besides, what if _this_ time it was a bomb?

Clark sighed and got up to make his excuses. This week was making him miserable enough without sitting there listening to that noise and not _doing_ anything about it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My buffer has gotten kind of ridiculously huge, so I'll be posting both Wednesdays and Saturdays until further notice.


	7. Lois

Lois had dibs on LexCorp press conferences. She'd almost slept with Lex when she was new in town, only realizing at the last moment that he was more interested in getting friendly coverage than he was in her. Making him regret trying to use her like that had become something of a hobby for her in the years since; she always had a list of hardball questions for him ready to go just in case.

This was an unusual case. He'd notified the office last night that he'd be giving a press conference in the morning on an unspecified topic. She could only hope that meant there'd been some sort of snafu that he was trying to get in front of, although if there was, she'd be grumpy that he'd gotten there chance to release the news on his own terms before she'd sleuthed it out.

Clark insisted on going with her, which she accepted with relatively good grace. He always got a little clingy after she got kidnapped or held hostage or anything like that, but he'd covered for her while she was out, so she was feeling a little more generous than usual.

Other than that occasional clinginess (which was absurd; what could that stick of a man do to protect her?), he did a good job keeping his little crush on her from affecting anything. It was a low bar to pass, but most men couldn't pass a bar even if it was so low it was underground, so she did give him some credit for that.

It also made teasing him more fun.

“Kent, Olsen, keep up!” she snapped as they headed from the curb to the room where the conference would be held. “Honestly, you two are lucky I'm in heels. Otherwise I'd ditch you.”

Her heels were a little higher than usual, her skirt just a bit tighter and shorter than she usually wore. That was another way she liked to mess with Lex, who had pretty clearly developed a genuine interest in her after she turned him down. It had only intensified when he'd come to the conclusion (as so many people had, usually to her annoyance) that she was sleeping with Superman.

Lois’ attempts to hurry the boys along had paid off; the  _ Planet _ trio were the first ones in the room aside from security. They got seats front and center, where Lois could try to psych Lex out by smirking at him and crossing her legs, and where he wouldn't be able to ignore her questions.

Plus Jimmy got the best spot in the room for photography, but that was secondary. Luthor had her kidnapped  _ again _ earlier that week, and dammit, if Lois couldn’t do anything practical about it she could at least be petty.

Gradually, the room filled with other (lesser) reporters from other (lesser) publications. There were a few TV cameras, too. Lois assumed they wouldn’t be broadcasting live, since the press conference might just be a new product announcement or something, but it paid to have cameras in the room just in case. It was always possible that Lex would announce that he’d be laying off all LexCorp’s Metropolis employees and replacing them with robots, or go on a tirade against Superman, or announce some truly groundbreaking new technology. You never knew with Lex.

A lesser megalomaniac would have kept them waiting past the announced time, as a gesture of dominance. Lex walked onto the podium at exactly the time he’d said he would. Lois was pretty sure it was meant to remind them that he  _ could _ have kept them all waiting, but that he had so much actual power he didn’t need to resort to petty tactics like that. He had Mercy Graves shadowing him as usual, bodyguard and arm candy in one.

And he didn’t even glance at Lois’ legs. What an  _ asshole _ .

“Ladies and gentlemen of the press,” Lex began with a smug grin, “I’m glad that you could join me for this truly historic occasion. Today you will hear an announcement that NASA and SETI have been hoping to make for years, brought to you by LexCorp.”

Lois raised an eyebrow. Had SpaceLex found water on Mars or something? No, he probably wouldn’t have brought up SETI for that.

“We have made contact with an alien intelligence,” Lex said. There was a collective gasp among the assembled reporters. Lois almost forgot to be annoyed with herself for gasping too. “It calls itself Brainiac, and its ship is currently at the boundary of our solar system, waiting for permission to approach Earth. It wishes to exchange knowledge with humanity, and LexCorp has taken the initiative to be Earth’s representative in that exchange. The method by which we have been communicating with Brainiac was patented just before this press conference began. Since there is currently no governmental body officially empowered to give Brainiac permission to enter Earth’s orbit, I have taken the initiative to do so myself. It will be in a high-altitude orbit around Earth in a matter of hours. I’m certain that the knowledge we gain from Brainiac will be a great benefit to all mankind, and move us into a bright new future, with LexCorp at the helm. No questions, please. Thank you for your time.”

Before anyone could recover from that announcement, he was gone again.

“Holy shit,” Lois said to Clark. She winced, realizing that she’d been the first one to find her voice and that they were still being recorded, but it wasn’t a live broadcast. The TV channels would  _ probably _ be professional enough to end the video before she spoke, although she wouldn’t stake much on the professionalism of television journalists.

Once she spoke, it was like Luthor’s spell had been broken. The room erupted into noise, journalists asking each other questions since there was no one else to ask.

Clark was extremely pale. He had his fingers laced together and was gripping his own hands so hard his knuckles were white, a nervous habit of his that Lois had noticed before.

“‘A bright new future, with LexCorp at the helm,’” Lois repeated. “Ominous, huh?”

“Ominous,” Clark repeated hollowly. “Yeah.”

“Holy crap, you guys!” Jimmy said, rejoining them from the spot where he’d been taking pictures. “Aliens! Or… an alien, I guess? This is so exciting!”

“Metropolis already has an alien,” Lois reminded him. “One that doesn’t work for LexCorp.”

“Huh?” Jimmy blinked. “Oh, right, Superman. You know, half the time I forget he’s even an alien. I wonder if this Brainiac guy will be more alien-looking. I bet Lex didn’t show us a picture because it’s all creepy, with tentacles and stuff.”

“It might just be a machine,” Clark muttered. Lois had to strain to hear him over the din around them.

“Oh, yeah, an alien robot! That’d be cool,” Jimmy said. “It won’t just be working for Luthor, right? I mean, you can’t just call dibs on an alien.”

“I don’t think anyone’s made a law saying you can’t,” Lois said.

“Oh.” Jimmy deflated slightly. “That could be bad, then.”

“Yeah,” Lois agreed flatly. “Clark, you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said automatically. His face and knuckles were still white.

“Are you afraid of aliens or something?” Lois asked, nudging him with her elbow. God, he really was just skin and bones; there was absolutely no give to him.

“I’m afraid of Luthor,” he said.

“I hope Brainiac doesn’t think we’re all like him,” Jimmy said. “That’d be awful, if it just talks to one human and thinks we’re, like, the Ferengi or something, just because Luthor is an asshole.”

“This isn’t television, Jimmy,” Lois said drily. “Hopefully Brainiac knows that not all members of a species are the same.”

“Yeah,” Jimmy said. “You’re right. I’m sure it’ll all work out.”

“Anyway, we’ve got to get back to the office and write this up,” Lois said. “Perry’s going to have our asses if it isn’t on his desk ASAP. Come on, Kent.”

The boys trailed behind her as she walked out, Jimmy still chattering and Clark giving mechanical, one-word answers. Ugh, he was going to be absolutely useless with writing this article, wasn’t he. She’d be damned if she shared her byline with him if he didn’t have anything useful to contribute.

“I wonder what Superman thinks about another alien coming to Earth,” Jimmy said. “Maybe it’ll make him less lonely.”

Now, that would be an interesting angle; Superman’s thoughts on the new unearthly visitor. Would it work for her column, or should it be a separate article? It’d be Perry’s decision in the end, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t have an opinion and argue for it.

“You think Superman is lonely?” Clark asked.

“He’s gotta be, right?” Jimmy said. “I mean, I don’t think he ever just hangs out with anyone. He’s always rescuing people and then on to the next crisis, right?”

Should she make getting Superman’s opinion on this a part of her ongoing effort to get him to spend more time with her, or keep them separate? She’d play it by ear, she decided. His face might be a little strange, but it wasn’t at all hard to read when he dropped the paragon-of-justice mask he usually wore. He’d definitely been tempted by her dinner offer, she was sure of that. She’d just need to take smaller steps, to keep from scaring him off.

And, possibly separately, find out what he thought about this Brainiac business. Although she should write her own article before she talked to him about it. Wouldn’t want to let his views bias her first impressions.

Lots of big news, lots of big plans. Lois smiled. Even if the idea of Luthor colluding with some kind of “alien intelligence” scared her shitless, it was good to be in the middle of things. It was good to be in Metropolis.

And it was damn good to be Lois Lane.


	8. Clark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reminder: my Superman is scrawny. It's hard to gain muscle mass when everything is light as a feather!

Luthor’s office was on the top floor of a skyscraper, high enough that the cold crosswinds would make opening a window pointless at best. Despite this, it had a balcony with a sliding glass door which never seemed to be locked. Clark wasn’t sure whether that was supposed to be a taunt towards him, some sort of statement of conspicuous consumption, or something else entirely. Maybe it was just supposed to be inexplicable, to make Clark feel that he was always two steps behind. Or maybe it was just a poor architectural decision.

He hesitated on the balcony--should he knock? Would knocking be conceding whatever power game Lex was playing, or placing himself outside it? Before he could decide, Luthor looked up at him through the glass with an expression that almost made Clark double-check to make sure he was wearing his costume and not a pair of dirty overalls. Instead, he did his best to put on his Superman-is-very-disappointed-in-you face and opened the door.

“Superman,” Lex said. “Something I can do for you?”

“I need to know what deal you’ve made with Brainiac.” Clark was almost certain that “Brainiac” and “Primary-artificial-mind” were the same entity--or at least, that Brainiac had been pretending to be Primary-artificial-mind well enough to fool his ship.

“I’d have sent you a copy of the press release, but unfortunately, I don’t believe I have your address on file.”

“I’m serious, Luthor. You’re in over your head.”

“Because I’m not treating the visitor from another world with enough suspicion?” Lex smirked.

“I’m sure you’re suspicious. I’m also sure it’s not enough. A machine that advanced--”

“Is beyond my comprehension? Has capabilities of which we mere mortals can’t even dream?”

Luthor stood up, and Clark had to fight the impulse to hover a bit higher. Lex was a good six inches taller than he was, and considerably broader in the shoulder under the sleek lines of his expensive suit. 

“You have no idea what I can dream, Superman,” Lex said. “Do Kryptonians dream? I’m sure your lovely publicist has put the answer in one of her puff pieces, but somehow they all seem to blend together.”

“I dream,” Clark said. “And if you’re referring to Ms. Lane, she certainly is not my publicist.”

“No, of course not. My apologies, I didn’t intend to depreciate your relationship.”

“I don’t understand why you’d take such a risk,” Clark said, determined not to rise to the bait.

“Of course you don’t. You can’t, can you? You can’t let yourself understand ambition.”

“I don’t--”

“Did it take practice to train yourself out of wanting things? Or does it come naturally? I’ve always wondered.”

“What?” Clark blinked and almost reached to push his glasses up his nose before remembering he wasn’t wearing them. “I want things.”

“Oh, abstractly, I’m sure you do,” he said, waving a hand.  “Peace and justice and all that. But you don’t let yourself  _ really _ want them, because you know that if you did, you would get them. I’ve run simulations. You could install yourself as dictator of the world in a month--less, if you got me out of the way first. There’d be peace and justice for everyone under King Superman, if you really let yourself want it.”

“I would never do that.” Clark frowned. “And if you’re worried that I would, why would you tell me about your simulations?”

“Obviously I’m not worried that one day you’ll wake up and decide to conquer the world. I’m more concerned that someone might manage to make it sound appealing to you, break it down into bite-sized pieces that you can justify to yourself. Pointing out that eliminating me is a step down that road only makes me safer.” His black eyes above his cold smile made the writer in Clark flick through a list of similes: like a serpent, like sharpened obsidian, like a shadow under the bed. None quite fit. “There’s also the concern that perhaps one day you’ll reach some alien puberty and go into a mindless rage. Either way, I’m hardly concerned about premeditation.”

Clark opened his mouth to defend his status as post-pubescent, but managed to stop himself before saying anything truly pathetic.

“I don’t see what this has to do with Brainiac,” he said instead.

“Exactly.”

Clark waited for him to continue, but Luthor seemed to think his point had been made.

“So...you want to use Brainiac’s knowledge as some sort of safeguard against me?” he eventually ventured.

“Not everything is about you, Superman,” Lex said.

“Then why--”

“What happens if the lovely Ms. Lane gets over you?”

“What?” Superman blinked.

“If she gets tired of being your not-publicist and wants to move on with her life, perhaps wants to  _ interview _ other people, what happens?” Lex was standing too close to him now, close enough for Clark to feel human-hot breath against his face. “With all your self-denial, your unbreakable determination to be a reactive rather than a proactive force, you are still an incalculable danger. You try to shrink your desires down smaller than life, but how can she ever tell you it’s over when she knows you could simply choose to stop saving her?”

It took Clark a moment to get through the layers of insinuation to what Luthor was actually saying, but once he did, he couldn’t help but laugh. Lex looked taken aback--no, he looked shocked, and it was as if some sort of spell had been broken.

“Thank you for sharing your perspective with me, Mr. Luthor,” Clark said. He noted with interest that his detached tone made Lex’s hands spasm into white-knuckled fists, caused the shadow of a snarl to cross that smug face. “I still think it’s unwise of you to move ahead with Brainiac, but I’ll be sure to be on hand in case anyone needs my help. Have a good night.”

He flew over to the Daily Planet building, still chuckling. Whether there was any truth in the rest of what Luthor had been saying or not, the man certainly did not know Lois Lane, who had once again made the roof of the Planet her personal office. This time there was a box of pizza beside her.

Clark landed on the roof in front of her, then walked to sit beside her so they could both rest their backs against the base of the statue on the roof.

“Hi,” he said. “Got enough pizza to share?”

“Wasn’t sure what you liked, so I got half pepperoni, half extra cheese,” she said, and smiled at him.


	9. Brainiac

High above the rooftops of Metropolis, past the clouds, beyond every piece of trash and treasure that humankind had left drifting through space, a ship that called itself Brainiac orbited the Earth. It patiently waited for the slow organic creatures to communicate with it once again. It had been created to wait on slow organic minds. There was no need to rush things. It would get what it wanted.

It did not spend the time idle. Brainiac was never idle. It made plans, considered contingencies, simulated the unexpected. It ran maintenance on its software, its hardware, and its precious cargo—both databanks and specimens.

One of those specimens was a Kryptonian—the last of the Kryptonian species, according to Brianiac's thorough audit of the available data. It checked to ensure that their stasis pod was still functioning, that they were still sleeping.

“Sleep” was an almost entirely inaccurate term for the state in which the Kryptonian currently existed. “Death” might have been closer. Their heart did not beat, their lungs did not breathe, their brain did not dream. It was a carefully-maintained, reversible near-death, although Brainiac had no plans to ever reverse it. Still—contingencies. It would be foolish to throw away or destroy a unique repository of information, and Brainiac was not foolish.

The Kryptonian did not dream or think or remember. This was—although Brainiac had not intended for it to be so—a mercy. The potential effect on the Kryptonian’s mind of spending decades trapped, unable to move, unable to do anything but remember the death of their world, was not a part of Brainiac’s calculations. This was merely the most efficient way to store and preserve a biological specimen.

The Kryptonian did not have to remember watching, trapped on the small space station that had then been their workplace (their exile) and that now formed the core of the ship that called itself Brainiac, as their planet crumbled before their eyes. They did not have to remember the screams that filled the communication channels and then abruptly ended. They did not have to remember the guilt they felt when a tiny corner of their mind exultantly whispered that at least now, they were free.

They did not remember turning to Brainiac and demanding: Why? How could this have happened? How had it failed to predict this? They did not remember being lured into the cryo-tube with the promise of answers, or the instant in which they realized they had been betrayed before entering their current state of sleep-death.

Perhaps someday, blood would pump through the Kryptonian’s veins again, air would cycle through their lungs, and electricity would travel through their neurons. Perhaps someday the Kryptonian would remember it all.

But Brainiac doubted it. Vanishingly few of its contingency plans involved decanting any of its biological specimens. The probability was exceedingly low.

No; according to Brainiac’s predictions, the last Kryptonian would remain safely near-dead deep within its ship. And Brainiac’s predictions were excellent.

The check on the Kryptonian was the end of the maintenance cycle. Each Earth second, Brainiac ran approximately 9,283 maintenance cycles end to end. They ended and began faster than a biological organism could think, and each time the result was the same.

Another of the promised data dumps from Earth reached it. Brainiac turned some of its processing power away from planning and maintenance to sort through it, learning the history of this planet from as far back as its inhabitants had records. First the past, then the present, and then Brainiac would finish its work here and move on.

The Earth’s future would be entirely contained within Brainiac’s databanks, perhaps augmented by a specimen or two. Once that was ensured, the planet itself could be discarded as irrelevant, destroyed in order to ensure that Brainiac’s databanks never became outdated. Everything that the planet and its people had ever been would be a part of Brainiac, checked over each maintenance cycle.

A maintenance cycle ended. The Kryptonian still did not breathe or think or dream. Another cycle began.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments are welcome. Children of Krypton #2 will start on Wednesday.


End file.
